Sledgehammer's Cycles

Sledgehammer's Performance and Custom Cycles

Friday, June 14, 2013

A Gun Control "hmmmm"

OK, so the EEOC has just issued a rule that it's illegal for an employer to refuse to hire someone simply because they are convicted felons. They say that policies like this are discriminatory because larger numbers are minorities. The EEOC says that this results in "disparate impact" and is presumed to be discrimination.

This seems ridiculous on its face, but let's consider the Second Amendment implications. Felons are prohibited from possessing firearms.

According to the EEOC, this is presumed to be racial discrimination. It would be interesting to see a class action lawsuit on these grounds.

10 comments:

There is one thing that has always bother me: arrest records. I think that the government should be prohibited from releasing arrest records to these background check companies for arrests that did not result in convictions. Presumption of innocence and all that.

I believe that a constitutional case can be made that denying felons the right to self-defense is, in fact, a violation of the 2nd Amendment.

I believe the argument is something to the essence of: but we can't allow violent criminals to own tools of murder.

The counter is, if a person is a menace to society, what are they doing IN society? If they are not, why are they being denied a fundamental civil right? Once a person has served his sentence, he should be a citizen in all respects. The problem would seem to be, therefor, not that guns are too readily available, but that sentences in law are inappropriate to the crimes.

And, ya know, nobody in power or in the hunt for power or seeking to aggrandize himself would ever try to distract the populace from relevant issues by pointing to some red-herring (scorn quotes) "scandal", shouting, "Look! Over there! Chase that one!"

So large numbers of felons are minorities and convicted felons lose their rights to posess firearms - ergo, laws banning convicted felons from posessing firearms are a racist plot to disarm minorities?

There actually was a case not very long ago (three months, perhaps) which struck down a felon-possession law on 2A grounds, in the wake of Heller. Louisiana was the state involved, IIRC. (Don't have the time just now to track down the details, for which I apologize.)

BTW, i have seen it claimed (on pro2A sites) that the first bans on felons possessing guns were in the South, as part of the complex of Jim Crow legislation. So the claim of discrimination is not as unprecedented, or as based in political correctness, as it may sound.

More here, including a nice compare/contrast of what the .gov EXPECTS employers to do versus what the .gov REQUIRES licensed gun dealers to do.

For hiring, employers are expected to "consider the crime, its relation to an applicant's potential job, and how much time that has passed since the conviction" and "review each case individually, and allow applicants to show why they should be hired despite a conviction."

For gun purchases, felony conviction == NO SALE. Period. Full stop. End of story.

I'd also note that, minority or not, keeping one's nose clean of felony raps is usually not that hard, but pointing that out makes me RAAACCCIIISSSTTT!!